In her 1747 book The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, Hannah Glasse suggests grating lemons with a piece of broken glass! Elizabeth David suggests lump sugar is one of the best graters, although she was referring to a lump sugar from a loaf, a sizable piece of which, complete with craggy edge, would rasp the zest nicely. I have tried sugar lumps, which work, until they crumble, which is why you need a bowl underneath. I have also improvised with a fork, which didn’t really work. Then the wind blew the camping table over – comeuppance for zesting in a field in Pembrokeshire. Some people are dedicated to their zesters, others their microplane (about which people become evangelical), I use the second finest section of my box grater, because it is what I have. Whatever you use, there can be no doubt that the insistent and fragrant perfume unleashed as you scrape your lemon along a sugar lump, fork, grater or even broken bottle is one of the loveliest kitchen scents. It should be prescribed on the NHS – for nothing in particular, simply lemon zest for life.
I have been grating a lot lately, for my annual batch of Nigel’s lemon curd which, apart from the three spoonfuls my mum ate straight from the jar, I have not shared at all. Also for Margaret Costa’s lemon surprise pudding, and an extra-lemony queen of puddings for my pudding-fond dad when he visited. I have also got back into the habit of making gremolata – parsley, garlic and lemon zest finely chopped into a fragrant and deeply seasoned confetti – which is good on meat, fish, and really good on broccoli ripassati, right at the end when it seems the culinary equivalent of gospel music, uplifting everything.
Like many edible things lemons are no longer bound by seasonal constraints. That said, they are arguably at their best from December to March. I saw this first hand in Sicily last month at a cookery school run by my friend Fabrizia Lanza. In 1986, her mother had planted a toddler of a lemon tree, and it is now a robust and generous lady, dropping her fruit on your head if you are lucky. We also visited a garden called Il Giardino della Kolymbetra in the Valley of Temples near Agrigento, an ancient garden which has recently been brought back to life after years of abandonment. The garden is thought to have been created by the Greeks in 500BC, then curated by the Arabs, who brought to it citrus and their irrigation systems, which still run quietly and ingeniously round the garden. A fruitful idyll, the garden is home to dozens of varieties of citrus and Mediterranean fruit trees. I now know about the three ancestral fruits: pomelo, mandarin and citron. Fussy but suggestible, the three travelled and cross-pollinated, creating all the varieties we know today, and many more we have forgotten. The most extraordinary was bergamot, which is a cross between a sour orange and a lemon. To begin with, we searched, doubting we could find it among all the trees. The scent found us. The skin of bergamot is so impregnated with essential oil its skin glistens and the scent is memorising, rich, irreducible and floral, almost soapy, and of course you think of earl grey tea. I only touched a fruit for a second but hours later the scent still clung to the tips of my fingers.
We arrived back at the school with 15 varieties of citrus in supermarket plastic bags. Over the following days we cooked many things: all of them complex in flavour but simple in execution. Used in savoury dishes, lemon is like liquid fire; used with sugar, by which it is tempered, lemons are fresh and blithe and the zest gives perfume that enhances the flavour. This is why lemon puddings using both zest and juice are so delightful.
The first of today’s recipes is Fabrizia’s Sicilian lemon pudding, which is just lemon juice, lemon zest, water, sugar, eggs and a typically Sicilian thickener, cornflour – which you could replace with another two eggs if you prefer. This pudding is rather like a butter-less lemon curd – softly set, gently sweet and sharp – with a texture that is somewhere between jelly and blancmange, so with a requisite wobble. Fabrizia sometimes serves it in a large, shallow dish, other times in glasses, often with sour cherries she has cooked in light syrup. I think maraschino could work. It would also be nice with lemon shortcake biscuits.
From Sicily to England, and a lemon posset – which, according to Mary Norwak’s wonderful book about English puddings, is related to a medieval drink of milk curdled with wine or fruit juice called sack posset, which became grander, eventually evolving into an elegant cream. Just lemon, sugar and cream, posset is a haiku of a pudding. It cools into a silky set cream with a sharpness that stops it being cloying, which in puddings, as in life, is important.
Sicilian lemon pudding
Makes 6 small glasses/bowls
Zest and juice of 3 large unwaxed lemons
3 large eggs
60g cornflour
250g caster sugar
750ml water
Cherries or sour cherries in syrup, to serve
1 Zest the lemons. In a large bowl, whisk together the zest, eggs, cornflour and sugar. Whisk together vigorously until you have a thick cream. You could use a mixer for this.
2 Scrape the mixture into a pan, add the water and lemon juice and cook over a medium low heat, whisking continuously, until the pudding is thick enough to really coat/run slowly from the back of a spoon. It should get hot, and nearly, but not quite, boil. Pour into 6 glasses or small bowls and allow to cool, then put in the fridge for at least 6 hours, or until firm and chilled. Serve alone or topped with fruit, such as cherries in syrup.
Lemon posset
Makes 4 to 6 small bowls.
Zest and juice of 2 large unwaxed lemons
150g caster sugar
450ml double cream/150ml single cream and 300g mascarpone.
1 Grate the zest and then juice the lemons (you need 80ml, so use any extra for another time). Put both zest and 80ml juice a pan with the sugar. Heat over a medium-low heat, stirring until the sugar has dissolved completely. Keep warm.
2 In a separate pan, warm the cream over a medium-low flame and bring to a simmer, but do not let it boil. Remove from the heat and then add the lemon and sugar and whisk. Cool slightly and then pour the mixture through a fine sieve into bowls. Cool further, then leave in the fridge for at least 8 hours or until firm and chilled.
